9 ms·

The most amazing thing about this to me is that as conceptually interesting as this contract is at a high level, and given that I started off interested in the

The most amazing thing about this to me is that as conceptually interesting as this contract is at a high level, and given that I started off interested in the document, about half way through my eyes were glazing over ;and I gave up. I have to wonder how lawyers do their job. I've read chapters of academic text for my own knowledge, but somehow this legal writing style crushes me every time.

abecedarius 5y ago
I wonder how many of us who've coauthored a patent ever genuinely read through the final version we signed. I did manage to get all the words to pass through my conscious awareness.
curiousllama 5y ago
Practice and context. Read nonsense everyday, and you'll get good at it. Assign meaning to the nonsense, and it'll be more palatable. How do we all just tap away at these buttons-with-letters all day?
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  I've always wanted to build an app announced "Button!" every time I clicked a button or key throughout the day. Might be good for context, or just the lolz.
couchand 5y ago
Think of legal writing as an incredibly wordy programming language and it will make a lot more sense. Lawyers aren't reading this for fun, their brains are decoding how the computer (i.e. judges) will interpret it.
- monkeydust 5y ago
  Makes me think of smart contracts.
emodendroket 5y ago
I recently bought a house in California and at some point a few hundred pages in I started to wonder about the wisdom of my insistence on reading everything. But it's straightforward enough to understand if you can tolerate the boredom.
- bartvk 5y ago
  A few hundred pages? Here in The Netherlands, the contract is maybe five pages, then a list of things that will stay in the house and finally a list of Q&A with the current owner about things like the wiring, any easements, etc. It's usually a model contract too, so you can compare your copy to the published model contract. What's in these "few hundred pages"?
  - emodendroket 5y ago
    Purchase terms, disclosures about the property, disclosures about the area it's in, financing terms, HOA bylaws, HOA financing, and lots more HOA stuff, title information, tax information... basically as much fun as you can have. And they keep adding more legally required disclosures, I think far past the point of diminishing returns as far as making anyone actually informed.
  - fraserharris 5y ago
    In California the seller discloses as much as possible to the buyer - i) house inspection and pest inspection, ii) disclosures from the county, state, utilities district, iii) advisories of risk of wildfire, lead paint, natural hazards, earthquake; and much more. This is so that the buyer has as little possible recourse to sue in the future for losses on the property. This behavior also enables faster real estate deals b/c the buyer is more willing to offer without contingencies.
    - emodendroket 5y ago
      I don't see how you figure. You get the disclosures long after you make your offer (although you do have a contingency if you don't like what you see, I think). And the mandatory disclosure system opens you up to more risk of lawsuit, since if you fail to disclose something you, in the view of the legal system, reasonably should have known, that's grounds for a suit (compared to MA, where I used to live, where you're free not to make a disclosure at all so you can't be said to have omitted anything). Also, dealing with the title company and all that definitely seemed slower than the system I previously experienced where both sides had lawyers to hash out small details.
riffraff 5y ago
I recently received a sentence where the judge copy pasted someone else's and midway there are names of people unrelated to the proceedings. Apparently this sort of errors is common enough that the law has already support for handling them as "irrelevant", but this proved to me people seldomly read law stuff accurately.
sandworm101 5y ago
This was not written by lawyers. Law students... maybe, but not actual lawyers. It reads like someone who has seen property transfer contracts but hasn't actually used them in the real world to transfer intangibles. >>Seller agrees to honor the spirit of this agreement Big red flag there. I have never run across anyone with legal training using "spirit" language. >>ignorance of any consequences ... will not invalidate the enforceability More novel language not from any legal treatise. And, by way of further example, a lawyer would have dropped the useless "the" before enforceability.
- Blaisorblade0 5y ago
  > I have never run across anyone with legal training using "spirit" language. I know what you mean (and agree), but some spirit language seems required by the subject matter :-)...
hn_throwaway_69 5y ago
Lawyer here. Legalisms don't make for particularly hard contracts. In the real world, I've found complexity is often caused by attempts to simplify the contract. Or perhaps to simplify its drafting. The most common offender is the overuse of Definitions which are often Capitalised Definitions. Interestingly in code you might compare it to the use of a function (); except that in the real world you can't easily call a function - you physically have to flick back and forth between pages to understand what the contract means. The other cause of complexity is when parts of the contract aren't written by lawyers, but by engineers or risk analysts. Which the lawyers will do to simplify their job. I've seen some of these contracts and after weeks I can't understand them. A judge interpreting this contract basically has to become an expert in the relevant subject area. I don't envy them.
- netcan 5y ago
  How common is it that a judge has to dig deeply into a contract?
  - hn_throwaway_69 5y ago
    Depends on the nature of the issue at trial. Sometimes it's fairly confined. Usually they don't need to understand the whole thing. But the interpretation isn't piecemeal and usually requires understanding the background.
- mettamage 5y ago
  > you physically have to flick back and forth between pages to understand what the contract means. Well, when a function is called the computer does this as well. And it drags me along with it when I am in a debugging session with a debugger on :P
BjoernKW 5y ago
I'm not a lawyer, but I took a few courses on legal English at university. These courses predominantly approached the subject matter from a linguistic, rather than a professional point of view. I find the language of common law, its richness, and history to be quite fascinating. The nuances and details it is able to convey are astounding. Legal doublets such as "cease and desist" or "terms and conditions" are an example of this. These phrases originated when multiple languages (i.e., Norman French, Middle English, and Latin) were used simultaneously in English society. Often consisting of two near synonyms, one from an Anglo-Saxon / Old English origin, one from a French or Latin one, these doublets helped with clarifying intent for readers with different native language backgrounds.

abecedarius 5y ago

I wonder how many of us who've coauthored a patent ever genuinely read through the final version we signed. I did manage to get all the words to pass through my conscious awareness.

curiousllama 5y ago

Practice and context. Read nonsense everyday, and you'll get good at it. Assign meaning to the nonsense, and it'll be more palatable. How do we all just tap away at these buttons-with-letters all day?

robbedpeter 5y ago
I've always wanted to build an app announced "Button!" every time I clicked a button or key throughout the day. Might be good for context, or just the lolz.

couchand 5y ago

Think of legal writing as an incredibly wordy programming language and it will make a lot more sense. Lawyers aren't reading this for fun, their brains are decoding how the computer (i.e. judges) will interpret it.

monkeydust 5y ago
Makes me think of smart contracts.

emodendroket 5y ago

I recently bought a house in California and at some point a few hundred pages in I started to wonder about the wisdom of my insistence on reading everything. But it's straightforward enough to understand if you can tolerate the boredom.

bartvk 5y ago
A few hundred pages? Here in The Netherlands, the contract is maybe five pages, then a list of things that will stay in the house and finally a list of Q&A with the current owner about things like the wiring, any easements, etc. It's usually a model contract too, so you can compare your copy to the published model contract. What's in these "few hundred pages"?
- emodendroket 5y ago
  Purchase terms, disclosures about the property, disclosures about the area it's in, financing terms, HOA bylaws, HOA financing, and lots more HOA stuff, title information, tax information... basically as much fun as you can have. And they keep adding more legally required disclosures, I think far past the point of diminishing returns as far as making anyone actually informed.
- fraserharris 5y ago
  In California the seller discloses as much as possible to the buyer - i) house inspection and pest inspection, ii) disclosures from the county, state, utilities district, iii) advisories of risk of wildfire, lead paint, natural hazards, earthquake; and much more. This is so that the buyer has as little possible recourse to sue in the future for losses on the property. This behavior also enables faster real estate deals b/c the buyer is more willing to offer without contingencies.
  - emodendroket 5y ago
    I don't see how you figure. You get the disclosures long after you make your offer (although you do have a contingency if you don't like what you see, I think). And the mandatory disclosure system opens you up to more risk of lawsuit, since if you fail to disclose something you, in the view of the legal system, reasonably should have known, that's grounds for a suit (compared to MA, where I used to live, where you're free not to make a disclosure at all so you can't be said to have omitted anything). Also, dealing with the title company and all that definitely seemed slower than the system I previously experienced where both sides had lawyers to hash out small details.

riffraff 5y ago

I recently received a sentence where the judge copy pasted someone else's and midway there are names of people unrelated to the proceedings. Apparently this sort of errors is common enough that the law has already support for handling them as "irrelevant", but this proved to me people seldomly read law stuff accurately.

sandworm101 5y ago

This was not written by lawyers. Law students... maybe, but not actual lawyers. It reads like someone who has seen property transfer contracts but hasn't actually used them in the real world to transfer intangibles. >>Seller agrees to honor the spirit of this agreement Big red flag there. I have never run across anyone with legal training using "spirit" language. >>ignorance of any consequences ... will not invalidate the enforceability More novel language not from any legal treatise. And, by way of further example, a lawyer would have dropped the useless "the" before enforceability.

Blaisorblade0 5y ago
> I have never run across anyone with legal training using "spirit" language. I know what you mean (and agree), but some spirit language seems required by the subject matter :-)...

hn_throwaway_69 5y ago

Lawyer here. Legalisms don't make for particularly hard contracts. In the real world, I've found complexity is often caused by attempts to simplify the contract. Or perhaps to simplify its drafting. The most common offender is the overuse of Definitions which are often Capitalised Definitions. Interestingly in code you might compare it to the use of a function (); except that in the real world you can't easily call a function - you physically have to flick back and forth between pages to understand what the contract means. The other cause of complexity is when parts of the contract aren't written by lawyers, but by engineers or risk analysts. Which the lawyers will do to simplify their job. I've seen some of these contracts and after weeks I can't understand them. A judge interpreting this contract basically has to become an expert in the relevant subject area. I don't envy them.

netcan 5y ago
How common is it that a judge has to dig deeply into a contract?
- hn_throwaway_69 5y ago
  Depends on the nature of the issue at trial. Sometimes it's fairly confined. Usually they don't need to understand the whole thing. But the interpretation isn't piecemeal and usually requires understanding the background.
mettamage 5y ago
> you physically have to flick back and forth between pages to understand what the contract means. Well, when a function is called the computer does this as well. And it drags me along with it when I am in a debugging session with a debugger on :P

BjoernKW 5y ago

I'm not a lawyer, but I took a few courses on legal English at university. These courses predominantly approached the subject matter from a linguistic, rather than a professional point of view. I find the language of common law, its richness, and history to be quite fascinating. The nuances and details it is able to convey are astounding. Legal doublets such as "cease and desist" or "terms and conditions" are an example of this. These phrases originated when multiple languages (i.e., Norman French, Middle English, and Latin) were used simultaneously in English society. Often consisting of two near synonyms, one from an Anglo-Saxon / Old English origin, one from a French or Latin one, these doublets helped with clarifying intent for readers with different native language backgrounds.